a brief history of ooranye
37: The assault on arclour

[continued from 36: The Actinium Fulfilment]

Arclour is the fabled Starward Polar region of Ooranye, antipodeal to the Sunward City, Skyyon. The Starward Pole has traditionally stood for everything that is utterly remote, mysterious and unattainable. Sunnoad Fiarr Fosn 723 had intended to reach it but although he had commanded fifteen hundred airships his fleet had been destroyed many thousands of miles short of his goal [see The Great Fleet]. For hundreds of millions of days since then, the legendary disaster had appeared to confirm that Nennkind was not destined to penetrate to Arclour. Nowadays, however, Uranians – like Terrans after the first moon landings – have got used to knowing that what used to seem unattainable has now been reached.

Because it is far too soon to assess the full significance of these tremendous happenings, any proper account we might try to give of them would lack perspective. Everybody knows the bare outline of the events which ushered in our present era: how the Second Great Fleet did succeed in reaching Arclour and its ultimate sivvan, and how that discovery retro-triggered our retro-Fostering of Ooranye, that is to say, the grafting of Ooranye’s true history onto the history of our solar system. [For a narrative of these events see Uranian Thule.]

So if the Fleet had not reached Arclour, the First Terran Contact eight Uranian years previously would not have happened either. The future re-writes the past.

Otherwise the world of Ooranye would be known to us still as the lifeless gas/ice giant Uranus, remarkable merely for its odd axial tilt, whereas now that tilt, and the lifelessness, never have been. Shunted, grafted retrospectively onto this reality is the real Uranus, become fully itself. That’s what we accomplished; that was our half of the pincer which adjusted reality - the other half being the triumph of Sunnoad Iyen Noom 80525 and the Second Great Fleet.

The Assault on Arclour also broke the barrier – the ontological membrane – which had separated Terrestrials and Uranians since First Contact. Henceforth in full co-dimensionality a limited number of adventurers from each planet have been able to visit the other. Earthmen and Nenns have met face to face at last.

A few remaining details will round off our sketch of Uranian history.

The actual eomasp which ended Era 89 was caused by the wave of emotion which accompanied the departure of the Second Great Fleet. But the short era which followed – the 8 days, 9 hours, 20 minutes of the Protactinium Era, the duration of the voyage to Arclour – counts as Era 91, not 90. Why is this so, and what happened to Era 90?

Exactly when, in other words, was the Thorium Era?

The peculiar whisper in the mind, experienced by so many as the fleet set out, and some unusual dreams, which came to innumerable Nenns all over Syoom that night, powerfully reinforce the following conclusion:

The Thorium Era never happened. But it could have, and, on another time-track, it did.

Sunnoad Iyen Noom has since admitted to chroniclers that it was only at the very point of departure that he made up his mind on a vital point of tactics. He decided that the ships under his command would, if they were forced, do what Fiarr Fosn’s fleet had not been able to do – namely, use the vibrational mode of inter-molecular transport which had been invented in the Bismuth Era [see The Mascon Expeditions]. Due to its enormous expense it could only be used once by a fleet of this size, and if that use were to prove inadequate, the airships would be trapped and doomed. But the gamble – in this universe – was taken.

The mode was used at one stage of the voyage, shortening it by a few per cent. More importantly, it circumvented ambush by Fyayman forces.

According to the Thorium Whisper, in another universe this measure was not taken at all, and Arclour was never reached, and the Terrestrials never landed, and the continuing era was indeed the Thorium, with a history very different from the path on which Ooranye is now launched. In that universe, for one thing, there are no Terrans…

Meanwhile in our universe, as we write, we are now in Era 92, the Uranium Era. It is the last, say the people of Ooranye, and it shall continue six times as long as all the others put together. Thus it shall constitute the remainder of this Great Cycle of 100,000 Uranian years, or 8,400,000 Earth years, of which about 1,200,000 Earth-years have now passed.

Our friends on Ooranye tell us, good-naturedly, that the days of Earth’s pre-eminence will soon be over and that leadership in solar system affairs is about to pass, inevitably, to their own giant world.

However, we wonder just how soon is “soon” to Uranians.

Besides, although Arclour has now been reached, Fyaym has not been conquered, and perhaps never will be. Can the Nenns dominate the solar system if they cannot even subdue their own planet? And yet this may be the wrong way of looking at it; perhaps Fyaym will always be needed to keep them fit for adventure; perhaps the great wisdom of the Nenns lies in not crowding their horizon.

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